Ellen DeGeneres and JCPenny team up

JCPenny criticized for Ellen DeGeneres partnership

February 09, 2012

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WRITTEN BY: Administrator

Ellen DeGeneres, JCPenny new spokeswoman

Image Source: Alan Light via Flickr

Ellen DeGeneres is the new spokeswoman for retail giant JCPenny, but the union hasn’t come without criticism. The partnership is part of the company’s planned public facelift; however, a group called One Million Moms is blaming JCPenny for "jumping on the pro-gay bandwagon."

The OMM on their website wrote, "Funny that JCPenney thinks hiring an open homosexual spokesperson will help their business when most of their customers are traditional families.”

On her Television show Wednesday, DeGeneres responded to the OMM saying, "I'm happy about (being the spokesperson), JCPenney is happy about it. But there's this group called One Million Moms that is not happy about it. And normally I try not to pay attention to my haters, but this time I'd like to talk about it because my haters are my motivators. This organization doesn't think I should be the spokesperson because I am gay. So for those of you tuning in for the first time, I'm gay. I hope you were sitting down. ... So they wanted to get me fired, and I'm proud and happy to say that JCPenney stuck by their decision to make me their spokesperson."

On "CBS This Morning," Thursday, JCPenney chief executive officer Ron Johnson, stated Thursday on “CBS This Morning, "[JCPenny] shares the same values" as Ellen DeGeneres and that their decision was cut and dry.

Though, one of the biggest supports of the JCPenny and Ellen DeGeneres partnership was Fox’s Bill O’Reily. DeGeneres, is quoted by the “International Business Times” saying, "I already sent out a tweet to thank you...and you didn't really make it clear if you were going to shop at JCPenney or not, but if you do, you can use my employee discount any time you want. That's for you, Bill. Thank you so much."